Before I get going here, when I was writing the title of this blog, I just kept playing the Law & Order theme song over and over in my head...so hoping when you see the title, it does the same for you as well. ANYWAYSSSSSS!! Let's talk conversion points, and some of the easy things to consider when you place these magic morsels on your site. Conversion points, focusing on the inbound marketing methodology, are the life and blood of your online presence. It's how you build contacts, and nurture them through to the end goal, which is a sale. Through analytics and numbers, it's easy to see if the conversion points you have set on your site are working or not, but it's a little more all encompassing than giving the "thumbs-up or thumbs-down" that Ceasar so elegantly portrays in Gladiator when reviewing these conversion areas.

Consider these ideas when going through a conversion audit or adding new points on your site:

Visibility

One of the MOST obvious ideas when determining a successful conversion point is sheer visibility. Are we looking at adding a whitepaper conversion point to your homepage, or are you dreadfully thinking of adding this to a page that lives in the cold, dark cellar on your site? Now, it goes a little bit deeper than just sheer placement. Maybe you have a very busy homepage, how do you gain the visibility necessary for your top of the line offers? Supplementing copy with visual content like a well placed CTA image can certainly help. But, while visual content has helped big increases in readability, like most ideas in digital marketing, it's becoming outdated. The use of text links, especially in your blogging, is slowly becoming one of the more effective ways to help convert website traffic. It's not just "placing an visual CTA at the end of your blog" and forget it mindset, you have to be strategic as to placement, as to best affect the visibility of your offers.

Pro Tip: Try different types of CTA's on your blog posts, and place tracking links in each to see how they perform. HubSpot started using anchor text CTA's, and said performance was boosted by up to 90% of their leads coming from this type of CTA.

Strategic Pop-Ups

I know what you all are thinkin...pop-ups? Really? Hear me out before you shoo me away. I am in no way say "ADD ALL THE POP-UPS TO ALL OF YOUR SITE PAGES!!!" Remember, this section has the word STRATEGIC in it, so I promise it's worth it. At Revenue River, we use BrightInfo as a tool to strategically place content pop-ups on a selection of our web pages. Effectively a solution to revive some of your better, but least downloaded offers, you can use BrightInfo to slide in a visual CTA that offers the visitor a piece of content, or conversion point. Even more advanced, you can have that pop-over once someone scrolls past a certain point on your site page. Let's give an example of how you can be effective using Bright Info:

Let's say you are an inbound marketing agency, and you have a site page regarding how you can effectively use social media for your clients...PERFECT!

Someone lands on this page, and is scrolling through. They see a bulleted list of how your company strategically takes social media campaigns to a successful part of your business...this section doesn't give away all of the "secret sauce", but does give you a little taste of how they can boost performance.

After you scroll past this section, a pop-over hovers across the left side of your screen. It isn't big, but visually appealing, and it offers a whitepaper titled "10 Steps to Boosting Your Social Media Presence". You click it, you download it, you hold the key to a piece of your social media success.

This works. Because it's not only timely and well placed, it's an easy way to boost the overall amount of your conversion points without bombarding. We aren't throwing 10 pop ups that you have to click out of just to see what is on the page, it's non-intrusive, and driven with specific pieces that pertain to the page you are on. Even moreso, your site might be setup extremely well, with conversion points and user experience in place and performing. Your site template may not have room for a visual CTA insertion, so how can you cleanly add a conversion point to your already great site? The slide-in function is a great way to keep your site looking clean, but also allowing visitors to convert in certain sections, all while adding user experience with the pop in CTA. Below is an example showing what this could look like on your site.

How Much Is Too Much?

This is a gray area when it comes to adding conversion points to your site, because depending on your business, there could be no real right answer. But, based off principal, when in doubt, add it. This goes back to the idea of visibility, and it's quite simple. By adding conversion points to your site, or MOST of your pages, you won't necessarily overload people with content they don't want. Adding a conversion point is a way to help educate and offer people content they need to help make decisions for their business. The more you can offer someone, the better likelihood you have of converting a site visitor, and it also puts your company in the category of "experts in the industry." This doesn't mean you can just fire away. Keep in mind the type of content you are promoting on the page, and make sure it aligns with your overall message.

Using Video: Can It Convert?

One of the more sought after success points is the use of video to convert site visitors. From a "user experience" view, it's tough to do. Most marketing platforms have a hard way to integrate video in a way to use as a conversion point. The basic process would be to use a landing page with a description of the video, users fill out the form, then they are either taken to a page where the video lives, or they are emailed out the link to the video itself. Overall, it can be cumbersome and clunky. But, there is a solution. With the use of Wistia, you can integrate a form for a conversion point, right on the video itself. This is a huge step in a positive direction in terms of sheer user experience. Overall, you can make it work in a way that attracts conversions, but there still remains one big question. What type of video content warrants it being a conversion point?

There are a select amount of video pieces that we would feel comfortable using as a piece of premium content. The first being motion graphics. So, let's revert back to the example of a social media whitepaper with the title "10 Steps to Boosting Your Social Media Presence." Can this whitepaper be more effective as a video? It could. In fact, I am sure you have seen a lot of videos that feature this type of approach. Here is a great example of a motion graphic video.

Taking that idea, it's plausible to turn a lot of your current pieces into a responsive, and visual piece that people will want.

Pro Tip: Try Wistia, and more specifically, Turnstile! It's well known that using webinars and webcasts as conversion points on your site can perform well, but have you ever wondered if a more user friendly way for them to input their information would boost this number? Try using Turnstile, and convert more visitors with the videos that you've already created. You can insert the Turnstile "form" at certain points in the video, almost as to give someone a taste that will leave them wanting more. Try giving visitors the introduction for free, then have Turnstile pop up before they can move on in the video.

Using Smart Content

One of the easiest ways to help increase the success of your conversion points is the ability to offer more. This process happens after an initial conversion from a site visitor. With the inbound marketing framework in mind, your website content conversion strategy should look a little like this:

So, how do you give them more after an initial conversion? Well, what did you learn about the contact from initial conversion? Let's say someone comes in at the Attract section of the funnel...more specifically, they subscribe to your company blog. Great! It's a start! And now you have their contact information. So, what next? You want them to reach the bottom of the funnel, you want them to become a customer. So, you take some time to dive in on their contact information. Maybe you can peg them as the decision maker at their company, which is a great person to be talking to. How can you make sure you can deliver the best piece of content for this contact? Smart CTA's & content. With someone coming in as a blog subscriber, it may be tough to not just hand them a handful of content pieces and telling them to choose on their own. With the proper questions in place on the initial conversion point, you can gather intel, such as their job title, industry, etc...that you can use as a smart triggers. So, you send them an email a week later thanking them for subscribing to your blog, but then you tell them you have something they may like. Great, you lead them to a landing page. The secret, that only you know, is that this landing page utilizies smart content based on certain properties that your contact has filled out, giving them specific content and conversion points that they are MORE likely to fill out and download.

Working for an inbound marketing agency, one of the coolest marketing tools that a lot of us can say we utilize is smart content, because it works, and you are giving people what they are more likely to want to read based off of knowledge we gain through the nurturing funnel. Remember, you need to be the expert consultant, and what better way to do that then knowing exactly what the next piece of content that someone SHOULD convert on will be?

Utilizing the content your company has to offer doesn't need to be a difficult thing, in fact, it should be the opposite. You have information that visitors need and want, so make it visible, and use the analytics you can gather from performance and placement to get better at your conversion point placement. If you still have questions, we can help answer your concerns, so don't hesitate to reach out! (Perfect example of an affective conversion point to close this out...and cue the Law & Order theme song).

Tom, aka "Big Data Tom", is leading our cutting edge multimedia department. As Director of Multimedia, Tom uses his wealth of knowledge to effect and create results that sometimes our clients wouldn't consider. Tom is also an avid hockey fan and player. As a die hard Red Wings fan, it is rumored he has a tank full of 11 octopi at home, one for each of the Wings Stanley Cup victories.